#arkoftaste – Cortona On The Move and Slow Food Together for Biodiversity

Carlo Petrini, the president of Slow Food, and Antonio Carloni, the executive director of Cortona On The Move, will be presenting the new hashtag on July 16, at Cortona’s Teatro Signorelli at 5pm, during the international photography festival’s inaugurations.

Conceived as a call to action, by using the #arkoftaste hashtag users can share images of products on social media, drawing attention to their existence, highlighting the risk of their extinction and calling for everyone to work to save them.

The ultimate aim is to create a collaborative photo archive of the gastronomic products nominated to join Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, the catalog of foods at risk of extinction that currently includes 3,400 products from 138 countries.

Photography will be used as a tool for spreading awareness and knowledge about the world’s gastronomic heritage, as the products will be photographed, archived, described, geotagged and made accessible on the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity website.

The Ark of Taste travels the world, collating the planet’s extraordinary heritage of fruits, vegetables, livestock breeds, cheeses, breads, sweets and cured meats. As well as raising awareness about the existence of these products and their endangered status, it also encourages everyone to do something to help safeguard them. By exploiting the communicative power of photography, #arkoftaste will contribute to increasing the project’s visibility and turn users into active defenders of their own local heritage.

The collaboration between Cortona On The Move and Slow Food will continue with a dinner during the festival’s inaugurations prepared by The Edible Commandments, an international group of chefs from the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo-Bra, who will be offering a creative menu based on typical ingredients from the Val di Chiana Slow Food convivia’s home areas.

Cortona On The Move festivalgoers can also visit an exhibition of photographs of the food biodiversity that the Ark of Taste protects and promotes, organized in collaboration with Rufus PhotoHb and located in the COTM Zone in Palazzo Ferretti.